Last weekend I spent the day in Behavioral Management class for foster parent training through our agency. The instructor was Dan one of my favorites, he has been doing this for 30 years and knows the whys behind kids that are in the system. He has seen it all.
Last summer he decided it was time to get some “field” experience. He has taught for years and intellectually understands how to deal with abused and neglected children but had never had hands on experience full time. He and his wife bit the bullet and took in a 9yr old boy named Zack. They got him straight out of a mental institute where he had been placed after his last placement in the foster care system ended badly. Zack had been in the system since he was 2yrs old.
Dan learned very quickly he was head deep in what he had been teaching all these years. Zack was misdiagnosed in the mental institution to have Bi Polar. He had many diagnosis which I will get to in a minute. He was diagnosed with Bi Polar because that is one of the illnesses that the institute gets paid for. If they had accurately diagnosed him and medicated him to treat those diagnosis the institute would not get paid. Which I find outrageous. The government gone awry again.
The first thing Dan had to do was to get him seen by his therapist and get the right diagnosis and get him on the right medications. He was diagnosed with RAD (Reactive Attachment Disorder), ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder), and ADHD.
Dan and his wife spent months working with Zack by applying his years of strategies and philosophies. He admitted that even with the intellectual power to understand the why behind the behavior he found himself in timeout quite often. You see Zack was also diagnosed with encopresis which is uncontrollable soiling. The doctors said that he could not control this but Dan found that Zach would use this as a passive aggressive tool to get back at them. He did not do it anywhere but at the house. Anywhere that it would embarrass him he did not have an accident. This issue in particular drove Dan to the point of braking.
Dan’s goal was to take a hopeless kid and get him to the point of being adoptable. Dan and his wife are in their mid fifties so their intention was never to adopt him because they were just too old but to get him to a point where he could attach and be adopted.
They had reached this goal for the most part. It got to the point where his psychiatric team decided it was time to start moving in that direction. So they set Zack down and explained that they would not be adopting him or anyone one due to their age so that he would understand they are not rejecting him but would reject anyone in the same way. They told him he would be adopted by another family an they would be his forever family! Zack seemed to process this and seemed to repeat back that he is not being rejected again.
While he accepted this on the outside on the inside something snapped and within days he was back to square one. Dan had failed and he and his wife could not continue because it was so draining. Zack had to be readmitted into the mental institution. They all promised to stay in touch and he still calls wanting to come back to Dan and his wife but it is just not possible.
These are the kids the system makes. I asked Dan what would become of Zack. He said frankly, since his wife was not there, Zack will be incarcerated at an early age and will be a life long criminal and drug abuser because he has relied on the meds for so many years. I followed up with, If Zach had a stable family from the beginning and had never been in the system what would be the outcome. He said that all of his problems were created by the system and by an over developed lymbic system. Because the human body develops from the Top down and from the center out this is one of the first systems to develop. Because of the trauma it over develops this fight or flight system.
The sad truth is Zack is lost to the system. Because Dan got him so old he did not have an opportunity to change his belief systems. It was so much a part of who he was it could not be changed. We need more good people in the system that can care for and make a difference in these children so that no more Zack’s ever fall through the cracks.
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5 comments:
When the boy turned 18, the guy would have only been like 60 right. I don't mean to be negative, but to save the life of a child he knows is going to go the wrong route, could he not have kept that kid and showed him there was something better than being rejected. In my opinion, which means little. Isn't what the learned man did kind of like dangling a gift that someone has yearned for their whole life in front of them, letting them think it was theirs, then snatching it away. My heart is broken for that kid.
Zombie I tend to agree with you. I did not live it with Dan so it is easy for me to say I would have kept at it. I have experience with a less sever child and it tested our resolve on many occasions. We did not give up but we did suffer as a family. I am heart broken as well for Zack. If we have more good people that would have got him at 2 and turned him around then I think he would be ok today. He had been embedded with his belief system that he is not lovable and the people always leave and that he is no good. Again I asked myself the same question you did, in my head of course. Why not stick it out with him and adopt him even at 50 something? Zack is only one of 1000's of kids unfortunatley.
I agree, Zombie!
In some aspects I agree, why not try to make it work and help this kid instead of sending him back? I also understand the difficulties of the "child the system created" having been there and done that myself. It is heartbreaking and gut wrenching when you have to make decisions such as "letting them go back to the system" or "letting go of them, to go back to the system" to keep your core family safe and intact - especially when you once thought you were adopting!
This is indeed the system. I'm living it now.
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